And she didn’t want to think of Lord Warren right now. He was too lovely to attach to this moment. “Please, just do it,” she whispered. “Don’t make me wait.”
“Oh, but I think I’ll make you wait.” As he said it, his mouth dipped again to her breasts. She felt disgusted and powerless, being pawed and stared at and slavered over like some East End prostitute. She closed her eyes and laid her head back on the pillow, determined to endure whatever he did to her. He tongued her pebbled nipples, circling them, then he nibbled the sensitive skin surrounding them.
She wanted to disappear. She wanted to feel nothing. But he wanted her to feel.
He continued to tease and suck her breasts until some simmering heaviness developed in response. She didn’t feel the heaviness in her breasts, but lower, in her belly and between her legs. Now and again he’d stop and caress her neck and shoulders, pressing kisses along her skin. He kissed her cheeks and her ears, using his fingertips to tease behind them the way he had in Arlington’s garden. She wanted to be a proper lady, a good wife, but she felt so lost. The more he touched her, the more the hot heaviness within her grew.
He shifted his pelvis closer, so his rod cradled within the folds of her quim. She tried to lift away from him, but then he contacted some part of her that ached in a completely novel manner. Now each time he touched her nipples with his tongue, she felt a longing there that had her shifting her hips.
“You see, my little innocent? It’s not all bad, is it?” His fingertips whispered down her cheek, brushing at lingering tears.
But it was bad. It was horrible, because she didn’t love him. Even more horrible—her body betrayed her, warming to his caresses. He shifted again, probing at her with his thick member, and she realized that she was wet down there, as if welcoming him to press inside. He moved his hips, tensed them in a sinuous way and slid back.
He meant to enter her now. Panic overwhelmed her. “No,” she pleaded. She pushed at him, not even meaning to do it. He caught her hands and pulled them hard over her head.
“Yes,” he whispered back, pressing them to the upholstered headboard. He gritted his teeth, his expression intent. He surged forward with a firm, abrupt thrust.
Aurelia cried out, straining at the shock of his entry. He persisted, holding her hands hard, sliding his body over hers as he seated himself deep inside her. It hurt. It stung terribly as he stretched her. She arched her hips but it accomplished nothing, only wrested from him a guttural groan.
“Be still a moment,” he gasped. “Lie still, Aurelia.”
She lay still as a corpse. She never wanted to move again. Any movement only reminded her of the stretching ache, and her vulnerability, and his coarse domination. He touched her deep inside with that thrusting part of him. He was joined to her, within her, and it seemed to cause him as much anguish as it caused her.
“Is that all?” she whispered. “Will you please get it out of me?”
“No,” he answered roughly. He drew back and then moved forward again, filling her, invading her, causing that frightening stretch and ache.
“Don’t hurt me.”
“I won’t hurt you, for God’s sake. It’s supposed to feel good.”
His voice sounded tight. She breathed in small pants. Good? It was the most outrageous, intrusive activity imaginable. This was what men loved to do, so much that they seduced women, and kept mistresses and whores? She couldn’t understand.
“Aurelia,” he moaned, as he withdrew and surged forward again. There was no denying it—he found pleasure in this. He gripped both her hands in one of his and used the other to tilt back her head. He kissed her, a strong, insistent play of lips and tongue that forced her mouth open. He pressed his tongue inside her the same way he pressed his—his—thing inside her. Her wrists ached where he held them. She felt an uncomfortable pressure in her pelvis above and beyond his presence there. She squirmed against him, not knowing her part in this bizarre exchange.
“If you do that, this will be quickly over,” he said through clenched teeth.
Oh, she wanted it over. She squirmed again and squeezed around him, as if she might be able to force him out of her. He gasped out indecent oaths that blistered her ears. She’d never heard such coarse language. Would he pull away and punish her? What would be worse, enduring more of this “lovemaking” or having her backside blistered again?
Her bottom felt sensitive and sore as his thrusts pushed her against the mattress. She didn’t know if she could bear another spanking. Better to be still and let him finish whatever on earth he was trying to accomplish. He kissed her jaw, her forehead, her temple, moving into her, deeper, deeper, deeper. It was fast and slow, hard and soft, long and shallow and then so forceful she slid across the bed. She couldn’t get her bearings and she couldn’t understand the nagging urgency she felt, that she should be doing something. But whenever she moved her hips he looked harried and displeased, and cursed again.
“My hands hurt,” she said against his ear. “My wrists.”
He let go of them. “Put your arms around my shoulders. Hold on to me,” he ordered in a voice so vehement she didn’t dare disobey.
Gingerly, she encircled her husband’s broad shoulders and let her hands rest on his back. She could feel his muscles work as he moved in her, could feel all the leashed power beneath his dampened skin. He didn’t hurt her so much anymore. Her body had finally come to accept his length and girth, but there was still that uneasy feeling of being joined to him. She couldn’t close her legs. She couldn’t escape him. She felt breathless and anxious to be finished.
With a shuddering gasp, he pressed his cheek to hers and went still. His hips ground against hers, lifting her from the bed. All the muscles in his back tensed as he jerked, and he made a noise that wasn’t words, only sounds, like he was dying.
He has had some kind of attack, she thought. He has died here in my bed and everyone will blame me for it.
She gave a small, whimpering cry, imagining her father’s disapproval, but then he lifted his head and looked at her. He was definitely alive. His gaze burned her, it was so intense.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Is it...finished?”
“Yes, damn you. It’s finished.” He shook his head when her face crumpled. “No, don’t. Don’t cry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He dropped his chin. “Damn it to hell.”
She bit her wobbling lip, not wishing to risk his wrath. A tear squeezed out anyway. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I did that wrong.”
He made a frustrated sound and pulled away from her, and sat on the edge of the bed. After a moment, he raked a hand through his hair, so that when he turned back to her, the black wavy locks stood on end.
“It’s not that you did it wrong,” he said. He reached and touched her hair, and rested his palm a moment against her cheek. He kissed her forehead, then drew away, his lips pursed.
She waited for him to say something else, to explain, to calm her confused agitation. But he said nothing. He stood and walked over to retrieve his dressing gown. His organ didn’t look so frightening now, having somehow shrunk to half its previous bulk. It wouldn’t have been so bad, she thought, if it had remained that size.
“I suppose you’ll be more comfortable if I sleep away from you,” he said gruffly. “If I stayed in my own rooms.”
“Oh. Yes.” She would prefer that a thousand times over what had just transpired. “If that’s possible, I would prefer it.”
He looked away from her, toward the ceiling, then toward the door. “Very well. Good night.”
“Good night.”
He didn’t even put on his dressing gown, only stalked across the room and opened the door, and stepped into the hall. A moment later, she heard his door slam with a bang. Well, my goodness, he was strange. His servants might have seen him in that state of undress. She thought it very reckless of him, even if his room was just across the hall.
She lay shivering in bed, trying to collect her sc
attered thoughts, trying to understand what had just happened. Her mother said this act could result in affection between a couple, as well as a baby. She put her hand over her womb, wondering how fast these things took place. As for affection, she felt nothing of that. The look he had given her as he quit her company...
She supposed men didn’t like being forced to marry, but she’d been forced, too. All in all, it had been a horrible day, even more horrible than she had imagined.
She wept as quietly as she could. She didn’t want him to hear.
Chapter Four: A Bloody Damn Waste
“My, my, what have we here? Observe, my friends. The married specimen.” Warren’s voice rang out in the dim, smoke-filled confines of their gentlemen’s club. A hand flattened atop Hunter’s news sheet as another lifted his half-empty glass.
“What are we drinking, Lord Townsend?” asked August in a mocking tone. He took a sip as he slid into one of the seats at the table. “Ah. A big, golden, whiskey-flavored glass of regret.”
“Don’t say such things,” Warren scolded. He knocked off August’s hat and made room for Arlington to set a chair beside him. “A married man doesn’t feel regret, only the lofty ecstasies of love.”
At those words, all three men stared at Hunter.